A string of newly filed lawsuits accuses the state of Alabama of failing to educate foster children who have special needs. Instead, students with special needs were segregated from their peers and were subjected to an inadequate educational experience by being placed in specialized treatment facilities.

The lawsuits are the result of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found that the state was discriminating against these already vulnerable children. The lawsuits were brought forward by several Birmingham attorneys including Tommy James of Tommy James Law; Jeremy Knowles of Morris Haynes; and Pensacola Attorney Caleb Cunningham of Levin Papantonio Rafferty.

The lawsuits name Nancy Buckner, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR), and Eric Mackey, state superintendent of the Department of Education as defendants, accusing them of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. This civil rights law makes it illegal for any entity to discriminate against individuals with disabilities in areas of life including, school, their job, and public life among other aspects.

The findings of the Department of Justice’s investigation were shared on October 12th, 2022. In their investigation, the DOJ found that Alabama “relegated hundreds of students with disabilities to segregated and inferior educational programs.”

The DOJ explains that children in Alabama's foster care system are entitled to educational services even when a child is placed in psychiatric residential treatment facilities (PRTFs). However, the investigation details that foster children with special needs who were placed in these segregated, on-site psychiatric residential treatment facilities were subjected to inadequate educational services. Not only were the special needs of disabled children not considered, but the quality of education was inadequate for children in the program to begin with.

Children in these segregated education systems were enrolled without being properly evaluated or assessed for their academic abilities. In many cases, students who were placed in the PRTFs could have been placed in local community schools but were not. The report also details that some students were placed in the PRTFs for longer periods than necessary.

These unnecessary placements resulted in students suffering trauma as a result of their severed ties to their home schools, teachers, peers, and social activities, reports the DOJ.

The DOJ report explains, “In some institutions, there is mandatory manual labor as a substitute for classes like vocational education or physical education. The practices that we observed in the facilities create obstacles to trauma resolution and normal childhood development; indeed, they often further traumatize the children subjected to them.”

The investigation also found that these segregated placements kept students from “grade-appropriate curricula, adequate instruction, facilities such as libraries, science labs and gyms and activities such as sports and extracurriculars.”

According to attorney Caleb Cunningham, it’s believed that up to 5,000 current and former students may have been impacted because of the state's violations.

Cunningham explains that the state contracted out these services to at least five companies that ran at least 12 facilities. Despite the DOJ’s investigation, the facility operators did not take steps to fix their discriminatory practices. The investigation also found that there was no state monitoring or oversight of the educational programs inside PRTFs and that the state did not require the PRTFs to consider a student might be better served if they were placed in a local community school.

Cunningham’s law firm has filed six lawsuits representing six plaintiffs who were subjected to violations of the ADA.